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By far the most intriguing thing in Rufus Norris’s new revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is seeing what the usually upright, generally wholesome Laura Linney does to the character of the scheming sexual adventuress La Marquise de Merteuil—and vice versa.

From the first glimpse of Scott Pask’s set, which distills the decadence of pre-revolutionary France to some lush drapes and furniture built for two, this doesn’t look like a place fit for anyone who’s concurrently playing a First Lady on HBO. Valmont (rakish Ben Daniels), the casually amoral aristocrat who presides with the Marquise over a tangled web of sexual intrigue, offers that her favorite word is betrayal. Actually, the Marquise replies, “it’s cruelty.” In that quietly bravura little moment, Linney doesn’t just prove she’s got the chops to depict the Marquise’s fiendish calculation, vindictiveness, and—when things go awry—flashes of pain. She also wears a genial little smile that opens up charming possibilities for the role.

“I have dedicated myself to destroying your sex,” the Marquise tells Valmont in the early going. Normally this is the kind of sentiment that might dent your affection for a character. Coming from Linney, who exudes intelligence and fair-mindedness, a remark that ought to reveal the depravity of the Marquise’s life instead becomes a backhanded indictment of the Marquise’s world. Amid the vile corruption of the ancien régime, you think, what can a girl do but crush oppressive men? Thanks to Linney, Christopher Hampton’s play could almost be the story of some Austen heroine gone horribly, horribly to seed. — Jeremy McCarter

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